Recently, a number of parents texted me to let me know that their child had passed their 11+ grammar school exam.

As always, I was incredibly elated and felt so proud of their children.

Hearing from these parents instantly took me down memory lane and I began to ponder about all of the children I’ve taught and the differences (and similarities) in the way their parents had raised them.

As I thought about these things, I realised there was one common thread between all of these amazing families.

All of these parents, regardless of income, race, nationality or creed, endeavoured to do things differently.

They didn’t just focus on raising smart children or creating the next Einstein. Rather, they focused on encouraging their child to be remarkable in every area of life.

This common trait of raising remarkable children struck a chord with me and I realised that it was the one thing that many parents miss out on.

Nowadays, life is so competitive that in order for children to excel, they can’t just be good or average, they need to be remarkable.

So, as a parent, how do you go about making your child remarkable and what does that involve?

I’ll share advice directly from these parents in an upcoming blog post but for now, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts.

One of the most important factors in raising remarkable children is to fuel their existing talents and gifts. Parents can do this through a mix of positive parenting and gentle but firm discipline. Nonetheless, the greatest influence on remarkability is simply spending quality time with your child.

I see so many parents who hand their child off to nannies and au pairs because they simply don’t want to deal with them. Sometimes it’s because they’re too busy or they have plenty of other things to do. However, my observation over the years has been that parents who spend quality time with their child raise the most incredible children.

I feel so passionately about this topic that I’m making a commitment to speak to remarkable parents and encourage them to share their advice.

Stay tuned for my next few blog posts where I’ll be talking about this in more detail.

Summer is almost over and here at The Tutoress, we're shedding a few tears because we just finished our amazing 11+ summer course. It's certainly a bittersweet time for us.

During the course we always cover interview practice, namely how to pass the 11+ interview and what to do to stop yourself from being a nervous wreck. You see, even the brightest of children find interview preparation hard.

In fact, I'll be bold and say that smarter children tend to underperform in the interview.

Why?

Well, there are several reasons which I'll go into in another article.

But for now, I want to focus on one of the most important reasons why children fail their 10+ and 11+ interviews.

The importance of this dawned on me during the summer course when two of our brightest pupils admitted that they'd passed their 10+ exam but didn't do well enough in the interview section to be awarded a place at one of London's most competitive schools for boys.

So what did they do wrong?

They didn't elaborate.

What do I mean by that?

They gave short, blunt and overly concise answers which might not sound like a bad thing but when an interviewer wants to get to know you, expanding your answers is vital.

You cannot give one word answers and expect to impress someone who is interviewing hundreds of children. You just can't.

Now, this isn't to say that you should ramble, it's simply that you should give answers that show enthusiasm and character.

For example, a commonly asked starter question is "what's your name?"

A child might think that replying "Jo" is fine but it can come across as being a bit blunt and cold. So instead, my tutors and I coach our students to respond with someone that shows warmth and character such as:

"My name is Jo and it's a pleasure to meet you sir."

By simply elaborating the child has now shown warmth, friendliness and excellent manners.

This is just one example of the many things that students get wrong when answering interview questions.

I absolutely love teaching interview skills so I could ramble on about this topic all day.

For now, take a few moments today to explain how important elaboration is to your child and get them to practice answering simple starter questions.

It feels like time has just flown by and I still have our last course engraved in my mind.

I remember how our students went from being shy and nervous on their first day to beaming with excitement and happiness by 3pm of that same day.

"What have you done to my child? She actually wants to do homework!"

That remark made me laugh so much but it's just one example of how much our students love our courses and literally end up wanting to come in every day for three weeks to prep for their 11+ exam.

Our goal is to always ensure that each student loves every single day of the course and wants to keep coming back to learn more.

Here are some of our favourite memories from the 2016 course.

1. Discovering that Benji had the best secret dance moves. He kept that hidden until the very last day of the course.

2. Being amazed at the fact that's Mohammed was preparing for his GCSE exams at the age of 10. He made national headlines when he passed.

3. Discovering at the course completion party that Bella had the voice of an angel. It's always the quiet ones.

4. Reading Nayanika's incredible creative wring story. It was so good that she scored full marks.

5. Playing the most exhilarating basketball games.

We're looking forward to even more incredible memories and highlights for the 2017 11+ Intensive summer course. We have just one space left so give us a call on 0208 242 4270 to book your child's place or check out the course booking page here.

When it comes to the writing component of the 11+ exam, many students fail to impress examiners because they use the same mundane descriptive words that other children use.

Such words are good but not great enough to WOW admissions tutors and examiners.

To help your child improve their creative writing and get them to stand out from the crowd, go through this list of 10 remarkable descriptive words.

To boost your child's learning further, encourage them to memorise the meanings of each word as well as the antonyms. This will not only help them to learn the words better but it will also help to increase their vocabulary.

Finally, finish off by encouraging them to write a great story or decriptive sentence using each of the 10 words.

Let's take a look at the words below:

1. Assemblage.

2. Dulcet.

3. Effervescent.

4. Elixir.

5. Ephemeral.

6. Fetching.

7. Becoming.

8. Gambol.

9. Mellifluous.

10. Luxuriant.

After completing this activity with your child, let us know whether they enjoyed learning these words by tweeting us @TheTutoress.